Ethan Dodd – Visual Artist. Cardiff, Wales

Summative post; Contextualisation

A recurring inspiration within my work over the past two years, Akira focuses on the notion of giving the power of a higher being to a lesser being, effectively casing them to ‘transcend’ their physical limitations through the use of such energy. This is very relevant to my own interests concerning the transcendence of man; especially concerning how technology provides us with more power than we were ever originally meant to have. This began my experiments with the creation of the computers with circulatory systems, as in hindsight, I was trying to create ‘life’ within the machines, through a strictly biological standpoint. This would therefore allow me to extend past my own limitations, on account of imbuing the objects with my own presence; ‘the hand of the artist’.

An artist who creates machines that resemble biological forms; the ‘strandbeests’ are designed to exist without the aid of Jansens, and he one day hopes that he will be able to make a herd of them, that will live on after his own death. There’s something particularly interesting about the aesthetic they hold; they are skeletal, holding no eyes or other unnecessary organs or parts, instead containing parts only for function. Yet, this provides them with a unique and engaging form; much like the ribcage of a megalithic primordial being, the pieces form a repeating pattern within the delicate and intricate moving parts. However, because of these strange repeating patterns and multitude of limbs, they do not specifically resemble anything on the Earth. These inspired the creation of my ‘primordial beings’, which are both biological and technological in essence.

StelArc (formally known as Stelios Arcadiou before legally changing his name) is a contemporary performance artist, and one of the leading artists exploring the nature of human evolution and robotic enhancement. Stelarc believes that the human body is ‘obsolete’, and that it is necessary that we become one with the machine in order to transcend our physical form and existence. The image put forward; of him writing the word evolution through the use of an artificial third arm, is truly a great concept, and execution, of an artwork.

A film recommended to me by Paul Granjon during a tutorial, and sparked an idea of creating objects that hold emotions. Not in an as advanced way as the entity within the film known as AVA. However, In order to exude my own emotions into an artwork. However, I have been struggling with this idea; but it pushed me onto the path of sculpture as catharsis once more.

What particularly influenced me about the London trip this term was the way that Ai Wei Weir utilises materials and ready-mades to draw out the inherent meaning within an object, due to it’s rich and long history and context. An object can be a symbol for a concept, a tragedy, or even an entire cultural image or line within a history or society. This prompted me to look at the form of the computer as enough to be a ready-made, and began me pushing the notion of the black box as a symbol, rather than something to be modified.

A fascinating artwork, it influenced me to go and look at avenues of exploration I have been looking at in the past, in order to better hone in on what my practice is actually about. Since I focused on the nature of magick and religion last year, I began to look at how the inner workings of a cmuter can be seen as a form of magic. This exhibition provided me a connection between the electrical circuits that I had been attempting to understand for so long, as well as the concepts found within magic. As sigils, a means of summoning demons, which are extensions of a human’s intelligence, look a lot like electrical circuitry, it can be said that these ‘symbols’ are the precursors of an A.I., or an electrical circuit. It’s also points towards the very nature of a computer as an intimidating concept; one that will eventually eradicate our existence, or force us to join with it.